FIG. 1 depicts a plan view of a portion of a conventional heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) disk drive 10. The conventional HAMR disk drive 10 includes a media 12, a laser 20 and a HAMR transducer 30 formed on a slider 25. The HAMR transducer 30 includes a near-field transducer (NFT) 32, a pole 34, coil(s) 36 and a waveguide 40. The waveguide 40 directs light from its entrance 42 to the exit 44 near the ABS.
The waveguide 40 is butt-coupled to the laser 20. Stated differently, the waveguide 40 is positioned with its entrance 42 essentially at the exit at which light leaves the laser 20. The waveguide 40 directs light from the laser 20 to the waveguide exit 44 at the ABS. The NFT 32 is optically coupled with the waveguide 40. Thus, light is coupled into the NFT 32.
In operation, the light is provided from the laser 20 to the waveguide 40 via the entrance 42. The light travels toward the exit 44 and is coupled into the NFT 32. The NFT 32 utilizes resonances in surface plasmons to couple light into the media 12 at a spot size smaller than the optical diffraction limit. The coils 36 energize the pole 34 to magnetically write to a portion of the media 12 heated by the spot size at a relatively modest field. Thus, data may be written to the media 12.
Although the conventional HAMR transducer 30 functions, there are drawbacks. The laser 20 bonding of the laser 20 to the back of the slider 25 is may be difficult to do. For example, the laser 20 may be bonded to a different substrate, which is then individually bonded to the slider 25. This bonding process may take a significant amount of time and may have alignment issues between the laser 20 and entrance 42 of the waveguide 40 Throughput and yield for the fabrication process may thus be adversely affected.
Accordingly, what is needed is a HAMR transducer that may have improved fabrication.